Nevermore a Failure
by Viviane Latour
Summary: Two years following the events of the game, an embittered Seifer comes to a realization about his life and what he can make of it.


Standard Disclaimers: Final Fantasy VIII is not mine. It belongs to Squaresoft and everyone else that had a hand in its creation (all of whom I'd like to thank!), which does not include me. I make no money off of the game or my writing. Sue me and I'll give you my collection of used chemistry textbooks... on second thought, no. I need those. I'll give you my roommate's hated biology textbook instead.

Miscellany (Please read it!): Okay, here goes. First, if you haven't seen the ending CG, **go finish the game already!** I deny any responsibility for non-comprehension or spoilers if you haven't finished the game. Second, I took some liberties with the game for effect, mostly with FH. I figured that, visually, it was the least polished of all the towns in the game, and it was the type of place that I could imagine an undesirable element taking over should the Esthar exiles ever leave it. So... I had them leave. Third, this is supposed to be Seifer thinking, so I'm not exactly strict with grammar, but it's still perfectly comprehensible. He's definitely not the type of character that I normally write about, so be a little lenient with me... please? Last, although everyone's favorite Disciplinary Committee looks happy at the end of the game, I don't think that it'll last very long. They have to eat after all, and they've been shamed the world over. I'm basing this entire fic off that idea. Also, there shouldn't be any continuity/factual errors in this fic because I've played the game recently, but in case I messed something up, please tell me and I'll try to fix it.

Also... **there is no romance in this fic!** Not a bit! (Trust me, I'd only mess it up something terrible anyway.)

Rated PG for Seifer's attitude and a generally somewhat disturbing aura. As always, reviews and constructive criticism are welcome, author abuse is not. Any and all irrational flames left by cowards that don't sign in will be promptly deleted; those by authors that do sign in will be summarily ignored. You have been warned. You can beat my fic to death, but if you're going to start on me personally, I have no tolerance for it.

...I'm done now. Honest.

  
  
  
Nevermore a Failure  
by Viviane Latour  
  
  
  


It's two o'clock in the morning. I have to be at the docks in four hours, ready to work.

What am I doing?

Sitting on the crumbling forgotten excuse for a structure called Esthar Bridge. Again.

Why?

I couldn't sleep. Again. Talk about pathetic.

I should just go back to that run-down hole Raijin has named the Rat House and sleep until dinner, but that would give the weasel I work for just the excuse he needs to can my sorry hide. The jerk reminds me of the most miserable instructor I had at Garden: short little thing, beady eyes, sharp-looking little teeth. The thing even looks like a weasel. I'd drop kick him to Tears' Point if I had half the chance, but I think he has eyes in the back of his head like that stupid instructor. Acts just like him too. He loves to dock my pay for breathing half the time like Instructor'd send me to the disciplinary room for not answering his idiotic questions in class; when I did answer them, he'd call me 'out of line' and send me down there anyway. I figured that if I was going to spend the afternoon cleaning toilets instead of down in the Training Center, I might as well have some fun with it and give him a piece of my mind. So I gave him some of my trademark snide wit. 

I'll never forget what he said about me then. "You'll never amount to anything, Almasy. You'll flunk out of life just like you'll flunk out of this class." I didn't flunk out of his class. 'Cause, see, Almasy's not so dumb. Almasy has a brain. Almasy used it. I passed just to prove him wrong.

Too bad I can't say the same about that life part. If that whole business with "the sorceress's lapdog and his posse, loyal as dogs and twice as dumb" wasn't bad enough, everyone that doesn't spit on me acts like they're doing me some huge favor. "You three are a risk, I'm going to have to charge you triple rent, but at least I'll rent to you." Slumlord said that. "Nobody else will give you a job, but I will." Weasel said that one, not like his job amounts to much. Raijin and I get to be errand boys. We don't even get the dignity of being dock hands. We get to take turns taking paperwork to the captain of every ship that comes in, then while people that actually matter, not to mention get double the pay, drag the crates out to the dock, we get to sort them in the warehouse. 

Fujin used to work with us until she caught the lecher looking at her the wrong way -- she kicked the creep into a stack of crates and knocked him out cold. He woke up inside one of those crates strategically placed at the top of an eight-foot stack. Guess who put him up there? Nobody messes with my posse. Nobody.

He never got to fire Fujin; she never came back. He's been out to fire Raijin and I ever since because he never could prove who put him in that crate, although he knows it was us. Lucky Fujin though, she works at the crazy old man's junk shop upgrading weapons now. It pays better too, but he only needs one assistant.

But not even her pay combined with Raijin's would be able to feed my carcass and keep the pit we live in if I got fired. Three thousand gil a month for a room in a concrete box built in front of that ruined train station on the ruined circle in front of Grease Monkey's shop. It went up shortly after Leonhart and his crew sent dear old Ultimecia back to the oblivion she came from, after most of the city reconciled with Esthar and its goofball president and made a mad dash out of Fisherman's Horizon, not like I can blame them.

For the better part of our combined pay, we get four lovely blank concrete walls, a pair of rectangular holes covered with glass that are supposed to pass as windows, a closet with a toilet, a sink, and a shower, and a refrigerator and stove that must be older than the island of Balamb. Oh, and we get a kitchen sink too, three rusted bed frames with mattresses but no pillows, and a privacy curtain for Fujin's end of the room. Slumlord must not be all bad, he didn't actually charge us for the curtain. She gets the wall with a window at the far end, the so-called kitchen takes up the other wall, I get the other wall with a window, and Raijin gets the one with the door and the closet-turned-bathroom. This dump really makes those Garden dorms seem like luxury accommodations. If we're lucky, Slummy won't overcharge us this month and we'll have a table in two weeks. Probably not going to happen.

I snatch a piece of gravel off the cracked surface of the bridge and throw it into the dead black ocean below me. I hate this place. Humid and hot as the worst days in Balamb all year-round and not a monster in sight save those omnipresent rats, but it's the only place on this entire accursed planet where I didn't manage to make an idiot out of myself.

"Couldn't you go back to Garden? You know, start your SeeD training again?" Some supposedly sympathetic well-meaning dope asked me that six months ago, like I'd go back there. And do what? Grovel before Leonhart and Trepe and Cid Kramer and beg for permission to sit in class with the sniveling little brats that couldn't cast a fire spell to save their own sorry lives? I'll pass. Not my style. I'm not setting foot on that miserable island again.

I know what's keeping me up tonight. Some little demon spawn girl pointed at me and said to her pearl-loving mother in her haughty North Galbadian accent, "That's Seifer Almasy, the sorceress's lapdog. I learned about him in school." Probably one of Deling's favorite illegitimate offspring, one of the ones that he actually remembered to write in his will. Can't figure why they'd want to come to a dump like FH, maybe Mommy plans to buy the place with her inheritance and turn it into an amusement park for her dear, fatherless daughter. Fine with me, just as long as you never point at me again. If I had Hyperion on me yesterday morning, she would have wet her pants in terror when I lined the point up with her perfect little nose. We all screw up, brat, even perfect little snooty angels like you. Quit rubbing my faults in my face. "Seifer Almasy, sorceress's lapdog" indeed. Grime like that doesn't suit _my_ name.

Nope, can't even take my gunblade to work with me because of some stupid antiquated weapons law. "No weapons allowed in public sight within Fisherman's Horizon proper." Forget the junk shop in plain view or the fact that every shadow-dwelling thug in this ram-shackle town carries enough arms to make the entire Esthar military fume in jealousy, just 'cause this law is on the books is enough to try to arrest me under it. I can imagine the headlines screaming the arrest of Ultimecia's former knight. That would make them so proud, wouldn't it? Pitiful law enforcement can't clean up this trap, but they can arrest me for some stupid outdated weapons charge. Sorry, but I rather like my freedom, for whatever it's worth. This bridge isn't technically FH property, so I can stand here and wave Hyperion around all I want and they can't do a thing. And I do. Regularly.

I twist my weapon in the faltering moonlight; it doesn't reflect the light quite like it used to. Too much blood on the blade, I forgot to clean it for too long. I could turn my head to the sky and ask for some kinda ethereal gunblade polish like some melodramatic moron, but I have my pride. Nobody's about to help a life flunkie like me, and I'm not about to accept anyone's help. Reminds me of something Instructor Trepe said to me after I failed the last SeeD exam, "Life's a thief, and you have two ways of dealing with it: either you can let it take what it wants, or you can take it all back by force. Either way, it's your decision." Probably the only scrap of advice she ever gave me that made any kind of sense.

I should have listened to her for once.

Now, I will.

No more slaving away at the docks at the crack of dawn for some rodent not even fit for the air he breathes, no more living in a hollowed-out block of concrete, no more Fisherman's Horizon-gone-to-pot. No more. I'm too old for SeeD, but I'll find something. Life doesn't end at twenty.

Time to rouse the posse, let Fujin say good-bye to the old coot while Raijin and I "rearrange" Weasel's warehouse as our parting gift. If we move fast, we can be across this bridge and at the Esthar barrier by lunchtime.

Yeah, I think it's time I took my life back. 


End file.
